The British Golf Team and the Walker Cup

The Invaders from Britain Who Will Do Battle, Next Month, at Garden City

BERNARD DARWIN

I REMEMBER that for the first article which 1 had the pleasure of writing for this magazine, some two years ago, the subject propounded to me by the Editor was our then Amateur Champion, W. Holderness. I recently went to St. Andrews, where this same W. Hoidcrness won the Amateur Championship again. I nourish therefore a distinct grievance against him since he has defrauded me of a legitimate subject. As I cannot write about him again, 1 think that I may perhaps give some slight sketch of the players, old and new, who are setting out for America in quest of American hospitality, which I know they will receive, and of the Walker Cup, in the winning of which I regard their prospects as far more doubtful. Fifteen players were asked whether, if chosen, they would be able to make the journev. From those fifteen ten have been chosen and I hope myself to accompany them, as I did two years ago, in the capacity of camp follower and reserve in the last and most desperate resort. The names of the fifteen selected (in alphabetical order lest any susceptibilities be wounded) are these: O. C. Bristowe, John Caven, Robert Harris, C. O. Hezlet, E. W. E. Holderness, W. L. Hope, D. H. Kyle, J. Mac Cormack, W. A. Murray, the Hon. Michael Scott, Robert Scott, E. F. Storey, C. J. H. Tolley, T. A. Torrance, R. H. Wethered.

OF these there are four whom I hope I may call, from an American point of view, old friends—Harris, Caven, Tolley and Wethered. I will not say much about them therefore except that I think that they are playing better than they did two years ago. Mr. Wethered may never again do so great a thing as when he tied with Jock Hutchison for our open Championship and w-ould, humanly speaking, have beaten him if he had not (surgit amari aliquid at the recollection even now) kicked his ball. But he is a better golfer now than he was then: his game is more, so to speak, consolidated and he is certainly a better putter thanks to the kind ministrations of F. Ouimet.

I think Mr. Tolley is better too for the reason that—in a good hour be it spoken—he has lost the knack of hitting an occasional very crooked shot. When a man hits as far as Mr. Tolley a little crookedness goes a very long way, whereas short drivers sometimes acquire an undeserved reputation for accuracy because they cannot hit far enough to reach the rough: but Mr. Folley in old days did now and again hit a ball that flew like a boomerang into sylvan recesses never before probed by mortal golfer. That habit he has now abandoned. I never saw any man so big and strong who yet appeared to hit the ball as easily as he docs now and, day in and day out, it would be hard to imagine finer driving. He is as majestic as ever: his shadow grows no less and the school girls of St. Andrews stood round him in reverential queues seeking his autograph.

Robert Harris too, though his locks are now of a truly venerable hue, played better golf last year than he ever did in his life—a remarkable thing in a man of over forty who has been a really first class golfer ever since he was a boy. It is not perhaps so much his play that has improved as that, in place of a too anxious temperament he has now cultivated a light-hearted seriousness, if I may so term it, which never deserts him. Of John Caven I have seen less, since he sticks closely to his work near Glasgow, but he was playing well at St. Andrews and is always a good golfer.

NOW for those who will be new to America. First of all there is E. W. E. Holderness, who has never yet done himself justice in a match against American golfers. In his two great years he has unfortunately chosen those when we had no invaders, if 1 except John Anderson in 1922 and this year Mr. Brown of Honolulu whom Andrew Kirkaldy is reported to have called, "Yon fellow from Halleluia". Mr. Holderness is a beautiful player with a beautiful style and this year he showed all through a most assured composure. He always looks rather pale and unhappy when he is playing a match, so that his friends suffer agonies in watching him, but this year he maintained a perfectly equable air of misery, whether he was up or down. And in fact I believe he was, in his own inscrutable way, rather enjoying the combat than otherwise. In the final match against E.F. Storey he started bv being four down at the end of the first nine holes, but nobody could ever have told it by looking at him and I feel pretty certain that he never doubted he was going to win.

This Mr. Storey is decidedly an interesting figure and America will test him to the full. He has just finished his time at Cambridge and everybody knew' he was a sturdy, plucky little golfer with a good record of hard matches won in the past: but I do him no injustice when I say that nobody dreamed of his knocking out Mr. Wethered, reaching the final and giving Mr. Holderness a great run for his money when he got there. If I were to sum up Mr. Storey in a very few words I should say that the only way to beat him was to beat him easily. A golfer in the very first flight, at his best, will be apt to do this just because he has the power and the strokes which Mr. Storey to some extent lacks. But let that great player be a little off colour or a little worried: let the match, in short, become what is called a "dog fight" and it is odds on Mr. Storey's beating him. There is no better dog-fighter: he has the heart of a lion and a great power of holing eight foot putts when the ball has just got to go in. It is easy to pick technical holes in his game: he certainly overswings himself, for the club goes far past the horizontal at the top of his swing with the result that he is unsteady in a high wind: again he takes too full a swing with his lofted iron club and lacks the true artist's power of playing a firm, powerful, controlled half shot.

But the solid fact remains that he always putts well and sometimes like the devil unchained and above all he wins. And that, after all, is a consideration.

OF the others none is more "intriguing" than Dr. MacCormack, an Irishman. It is a wonderful thing that he can play golf at all: a quite miraculous thing that he can play as well as he does. He had a very hard time of it in the war and was badly "knocked out", spent, I believe, a long time on the flat of his back and is permanently laced up in bandages. As a result he looks, with his grey hair, much more worn and old than his thirty-three years justify. Nevertheless I do not think his flesh can be very weak and his spirit certainly is not. He has a great heart in him, a pair of wrists like steel and he flicks the ball along vast distances with a 16 ounce club which looks like a willow wand in his hands. I should hardly call him an accomplished player, his iron play has not quite the polish or the sureness of a master, but a very dangerous and courageous player he is.

The player who is essentially accomplished is Michael Scott who according to the standards of America, the land of infant prodigies, is an old man of forty-five. Mr. Scott comes of a family of golfers, for his father, Lord Eldon, had a private course in Gloucestershire: he and his brothers, fine players, all played from their youth up, and his sister Lady Margaret Hamilton-Russell was our first lady Champion and at her zenith as much in a class of her own as is Miss Joyce Wethered today. Mr. Scott is an interesting study in golfing style. I did not know him before, as quite a young man, he went to live in Australia, where incidentally he won two Open Championships and Heaven knows how many Amateur ones, but I believe in those days he had a very free, long, slashing and flamboyant swing. When he came home he was a changed man and had curbed his methods into a positively austere simplicity. Today he just seems to stand still on his feet, pick the club up quietly and then hit the ball with a tremendously powerful wrist and forearm. He is at his best in a wind for he has a noteworthy power of making the ball fly low and bore its way through any hurricane that blows. With this severity of method he has cultivated a remarkable impassivity of demeanour. To some extent perhaps it masks an ordinary human volcano within, but as far as outward appearances go, he is almost the most passionless of golfers.

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Major Charles Hezlet comes also from a redoubtable family of golfers—all of them, save himself, ladies. He learned the game at Portrush in Ireland. Miss May Hezlet, now Mrs. Ross, won many Championships in the era succeeding Lady Margaret Scott's reign: two other sisters were fine players and Mrs. Hezlet, their mother, has just played in the Ladies Championship at the age of seventy. I cannot imagine a better man for a golfing tour than Major Hezlet, for he is very strong, untiring and imperturbable. A graceful golfer he is not: Nature did not build him to that end: he stands a very long way from the ball with his feet a long way apart and heaves at the ball in an earthshaking manner; but a good golfer he most emphatically is and I shall expect him to be one of the successes of the side.

With the others I must deal rather more briefly. W. A. Murray is an extraordinarily steady and accurate player whose game should be well suited to Garden City, if the match be played there. He does not hit the ball a very long way: he does not try to do so: no one shot of his will even perhaps send a thrill down the small of your back: but I know no one of our amateurs who can go on for so long a stretch without making a bad shot and that means hard work for his adversary. After one of his matches in the Championship (he ultimately reached the semi-final) I asked Mr. Murray's brother how he had played. The answer was couched in two words, "Very mechanical". He had been, in fact, a relentless machine that turned out two regulation threes at the two short holes, two fives at the two long ones, and, four at all the rest. Mr. Murray can be and is, beaten now and then, but he is unlikely ever to be beaten by much and he is a quite admirable foursome player. D. H. Kyle is a St. Andrews player born and bred, about 27 years old, who has now migrated to London. Strong, confident and a good putter. He overwhelmed Mr. Tollev this year by means of a perfect avalanche of threes such as would have buried anybody. He cannot always do that but I think he always hopes that he is going to—a fine quality in a golfer. O. C. Bristowe is something of the same type of player. A little rough-hewn in method but very strong and cheerful and with a delicate touch on the green. He is a converted cricketer, who was a very good bowler at Oxford before the war and has still something of cricket about his golf.

Not so Mr. Robert Scott, whom you could tell at first sight for a Scottish golfer, teethed on a golf club, with all those little nameless mannerisms of waggle and address that mark the Scottish school. He is very neat, accurate and accomplished but lacks something of power and would be better suited, I fancy, by Garden City than he would by the National. Mr. Hope and Mr. Torrance are likewise Scotsmen. Mr. Hope is quite young with a fine style and was chosen not so much, I fancy, for what he has done as for his potential merits and because future Walker Cup titles must be built up from youth and not from middle age. Mr. Hope did, in fact, play in last year's match at St. Andrews and fell rather disastrously before Mr. Max Marston. Mr. T. A. Torrance, a younger brother of Mr. W. B. Torrance who came to America in 1922, has a beautiful style and can be very brilliant. I do not think he has ever yet done himself full justice but he has a fine game in him.

Whether all these men can get away, at the last moment, I do not yet know. Some of them almost certainly will have to refuse, for business is business and bread must be earned, but I know that we are sending a good team and a cheerful one.